I know what it's like
by heyjudeeeee
Summary: Broken, beaten, and left for dead, Clint Barton was rescued by Phil Coulson and brought into SHIELD. Ten years later, the hawk does the same for a certain spider. (Both times, Nick Fury is NOT pleased.)
1. Chapter 1

_New York City, February 1995._

Clint was shivering. He clutched his broken leg closer to himself, biting his tongue as his eyes began to sting with tears that threatened to fall. He shouldn't cry – he _wouldn't_ – because the Swordsman had taught him that crying was a sign of weakness, and that weakness was unacceptable.

The Swordsman.

_Barney_.

Clint sniffed and gingerly wrapped himself tighter in a ratty blanket, ignoring the aching feeling in his empty stomach as it began to rain. He stared morosely outside the abandoned boxcar that has been his home for the past three days… ever since the Swordsman had beaten him up and left him for dead, as Barney stared in frozen shock.

* * *

"I asked for_ forty _percent!" the Swordsman yelled.

Clint peeked from behind the tent curtain, watching covertly as his mentor picked up a trembling man by the scruff of his collar. The slightly stout man yelped as his feet left the ground, whimpering slightly as his bowler hat tumbled from his shiny bald head. Clint recognized him – he was the man who counted the money in the ticket booth after each performance.

"S-sir," he mumbled. "S-sales weren't too g-great this season, y-you know…"

"Do I look like I care?" the Swordsman snarled.

"B-but – we needed to feed the animals, sir..."

"_Do I look like I care about the goddamn elephants, Wayne?!_"

Wayne gulped.

"The other performers are pretty f-fond of them…" he stammered. It was true. Clint and Barney were particularly doting upon the newborn calf, Daisy, and would spend their free time feeding her overripe apples and giving her baths.

He suppressed a gasp as his mentor, his _idol_, threw Wayne onto the grimy floor and whipped out his sword.

"No… p-please…. _sir…_"

Clint would never forget the scream that followed.

* * *

"_Snitches get stitches_," his mentor had sneered, as he dodged Clint's kick and pinned him to the ground.

Clint cried out as he felt his leg crack – just as the Swordsman whipped out his pocketknife.

"What did I teach you about showing pain?" he jeered, as he pressed the blade against Clint's temple. Clint hissed as he felt the knife slice through his skin.

"Better question," his teacher continued, "What did I teach you about _loyalty_?!"

Clint yelled and wrestled out of the Swordsman's grip, head-butting him square in the nose. He gasped as bright red blood spurted from the clean break, some falling onto Clint's shirt.

His mentor just chuckled.

"Not bad, Clintie," he said, getting up and wiping blood from his face. "I've taught you well."

Clint tried to catch his breath, glaring at the man whom he once idolized.

"Come on, Barney," the Swordsman spat.

Barney was still standing frozen a few feet away, gaping slack-jawed from one bloody person to the next.

"W-what?" he stammered.

The Swordsman sniffed in disgust as he looked down on Clint.

"We're leaving. Before the cops get here."

Barney didn't move. Clint looked up at him, still breathing heavily.

"Come _on,_ kid," growled the Swordsman impatiently. "Or do you want to end up like _him_ as well?"

Barney looked from Clint, to their mentor, then back to his brother. Slowly, he walked towards the Swordsman.

* * *

Clint didn't let himself cry as he watched them run away from the circus tent. But now, combined with the constant throbbing pain in his leg, the tears were threatening to fall.

"Hey kid," said a curious voice.

Clint looked up. Standing above him was a slightly balding man wearing an intimidating black suit and a kind smile. In one hand, he was holding an umbrella, and in the other, a candy bar.

He offered the candy bar to Clint, who hesitantly took it. He peeled off the wrapper, sniffed it, and then stuffed the entire thing in his mouth.

Clint closed his eyes, savoring the sweet notes of caramel and chocolate. In the circus, chocolate was a luxury, since there was never much money to go around (_No thanks to that bastard_, Clint thought to himself). He looked at the man in the suit warily as he took a seat next to him in the smelly boxcar.

"What's your name?" the man asked.

Clint swallowed.

"Clint," he said. "But they call me Hawkeye."

"Why's that?"

Clint was now licking the wrapper for any morsels of chocolate he might have missed.

"Well," he began slowly, "the Swordsm– I mean… people say that I have eyes like a hawk. And never miss the bull's-eye. So… '_Hawkeye_.'" He shrugged. "I guess that's why."

He didn't really want to talk about it anymore.

"Who are _you_?" he retorted.

The man smiled again.

"Phil," he said. "Phil Coulson."

"Got anymore of those candy bars, Phil Coulson?" Clint asked, eyeing his empty wrapper hungrily.

Phil chuckled. He pulled out a pack of donuts from his pocket.

"What do you mean, you never miss the bull's-eye?" asked Phil curiously, as Clint snatched the donuts from him eagerly.

Clint frowned. He stuffed two donuts into his mouth and reached under his ratty blanket, pulling out a small wooden bow and arrow. Aiming for a tree 300 feet away, Clint hit a sawed-off branch right in the middle of the stump.

"_That's_ what I mean," he said, grinning smugly up at Phil, who let out a low whistle.

He ate in silence for a while, as Phil eyed him inquisitively. Finally, as he finished the last donut, his food savior spoke.

"So, Clint. With a talent like _that_… why are you living in a place like this?"

Clint crumpled up the donut wrapper and shrugged.

"It's a long story," he mumbled.

"I've got time," replied Phil simply.

Clint sighed. Phil was smiling kindheartedly.

"I thought I was doing the right thing…" he began. "I just – there was this guy, we called him the Swordsman. I don't know what his real name is. He taught me how to shoot straight."

He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sodden shirt sleeve, which didn't do much good.

"What happened to your leg?" asked Phil gently, noticing for the first time that it was bent at an awkward angle.

Clint didn't answer and just looked away, as Phil placed a hand softly on his shoulder.

"_Let me help you_."

Clint winced as he shifted his weight to his broken leg. It took him a whole minute before he finished the last donut and nodded slowly, looking up at Phil. He leaned heavily against his rescuer as he limped towards the black Mercedes, and even allowed Phil to help him into the front seat. Phil didn't seem to mind in the slightest, even when Clint got mud on the black leather.

"Where are you taking me?" Clint mumbled quietly.

Phil started the car.

"The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division," he said.

He looked over at Clint, and smiled as he saw that he was curled against the window, sleeping.

* * *

**A.N.:** I imagine Phil found Clint when he was around 12 years old. One day he didn't feel like going to work because Maria had a shitload of paperwork for him to do and Fury had been whining about Stark all week. On his way there, he saw a young boy covered in dirt and blood inside a boxcar, shivering and looking starved. Since he wasn't in a hurry to get to SHIELD that day, he parked the car and went to give the boy his snack. But when Clint shot the arrow straight into the tree thirty feet away, Phil decided to take him with him. He had a feeling that this kid was special.


	2. Chapter 2

_SHIELD land headquarters, New York City, February 1995._

"Do you want to explain this one to me, Agent Coulson?" barked Nick Fury, as Coulson anxiously watched the doctors place an oxygen mask over the boy's shivering body, prepping him for surgery.

Fury had just gotten off the phone with Obadiah Stane – something about that goddamn Tony Stark – and already was not in the best of moods when Maria Hill barged into his room with a frenzied "_Sir_. Coulson has a _kid_." He didn't say anything as he marched out his office, just in time to see Phil Coulson half-carrying a sopping wet, muddy preteen to the medical ward across the hall, ordering the nearest nurse to look at the boy's leg and get him a blanket.

_Motherfucker_, Fury thought.

"Coulson!" he barked again, when his second-in-command didn't answer.

"Look, sir, I found him pretty much dying –"

"_Who_." It sounded more like a threat than a question.

"His name is Clint. He's an archer."

"I don't care what he is. He's barely hit puberty."

Coulson ignored him.

"He shot a target from three hundred feet away."

Fury didn't look impressed.

"He's _twelve_," Coulson added.

Fury grunted.

"And what exactly do you expect us to do with a _twelve-year old_?" he demanded.

Coulson thought for a second.

"Train him," he said simply.

Fury snorted.

"I'm serious, sir. The boy is tough. When I found him, he was bruised and bloodied all over, and he fractured his tibia. Never showed an ounce of pain. And you have to admit – he puts most of our best agents to shame with a bow and arrow."

Fury glared.

"Sir," Coulson pressed on, "think about it – he's _perfect_ for SHIELD. If we start training him now, just imagine what a sniper he'll be in five or six years."

He paused before going on.

"I bet he'll end up even better than y-"

"That's _enough_, agent," Fury snapped, still glaring at Coulson with one intimidating eye. "What do you mean, 'when _we_ start training him?'" he asked. "Who's '_we_' exactly?"

"I'll do it," Coulson offered immediately.

Fury _harrumph_ed. He and Coulson stared each other down for a minute. Finally, Fury rolled his eye.

"Don't make me regret this," he said darkly, as he stalked back into his office.

* * *

"And this, Clint, is the training room."

Clint hobbled into the large room, gazing quizzically at the assortment of weapons lining the shelves and walls. He had just been discharged from the medical ward after being treated for dehydration, hypothermia, a snapped tibia, and miscellaneous deep cuts and bruises. The doctors had put him on crutches for a few weeks.

He leaned his crutches against a wall and limped over the nearest handgun.

"Careful with that," Phil warned, as Clint picked it up with a slightly mischievous grin on his face. "That's a-"

".15 caliber revolver," Clint finished for him. He looked up and smiled innocently. "I know. Classic. Simple, but dangerous."

He cocked the gun and aimed for the targets on the opposite side of the room, shooting four bullets into the middle ring fifty feet away. The fifth bullet missed by a centimeter.

Phil raised his eyebrows.

"Hmm," said Clint, frowning. "I'm rusty."

As Clint returned the gun to its shelf and began examining the bigger guns with interest, Phil smiled to himself. He made a mental note to tell Fury about this.

SHIELD had a new protégé.

* * *

"Coulson," an all-too familiar voice snapped.

"Yes sir?" Phil replied, not looking up from the small mountain of paperwork he had been slowly working his way through.

His one-eyed boss dropped another stack of papers onto what used to be an organized pile of field reports. Phil peered over his reading glasses to see what Fury wanted.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Paperwork," growled Fury, stating the obvious. "For the new kid. And I mean literally. The new _kid_," he added, as if he didn't make himself clear the first time.

"I'll deal with it after I'm finished reviewing the reports from Madrid," Phil sighed, absentmindedly flipping through the documents Fury unceremoniously dumped on his desk. Apparently SHIELD had done a customarily extensive background check on their new adolescent marksman.

"Where's the pubescent hawk right now anyway?" Fury snapped.

"In the training room. Sitwell's teaching him hand-to-hand. The kid's incredible from a distance, but he needs a little work fighting someone up close. He's great with a sword though."

There was a hint of pride in Coulson's voice.

"We've got Sitwell and Jones training him. They offered," Coulson added, when Fury narrowed his eye, as if he didn't particularly like the idea of two of his deadliest Level Six agents on babysitting duty.

He grunted and turned to leave.

"Get that annoying bird kid a uniform, Coulson."

Coulson looked up from his paperwork and beamed.

"Oh, and by the way," Fury added, turning around as he reached the door, "if he's going to be with SHIELD, he'll need a legal guardian to sign off for him."

That afternoon, Fury scowled and barked at his secretary to bring him some aspirin as he looked through Barton's new SHIELD profile. In stupid precise handwriting, "_Phillip S. Coulson_" was signed neatly beneath the line that read "_parent/guardian signature if under 14_."

* * *

**A.N.:** I imagined SHIELD begins recruiting agents at the age of 14, since that's when people begin to show the world their talents, and SHIELD seeks them out to train them. They had trained a few 13-year-old assassins before, whose parents were also in the business and gave them permission to be trained. Clint was the youngest agent in SHIELD history, so the agents doted on him. Fury begins giving Clint missions when he's 14, despite Phil's protests (most agents don't get put into missions until they're at least 16 with at least three years of training). But of course Clint does spectacularly, comes back with a bloodied lip, a few bruises, and a huge grin as he lightheartedly says to his guardian, "Don't worry, Phil. I did good."

Also, I'm not a weapons expert.

And yes. Phil's middle name is "Steve."


	3. Chapter 3

"Just like Budapest all over again, huh?"

Clint smirked as he sent an arrow straight through the cracks of an alien's armor.

"You and I remember Budapest _very_ differently."

* * *

_Budapest, November 2005._

"I got a clear shot. Bring in a clean-up team ETA 10 minutes."

Clint strung an arrow into his bow and aimed for the flash of red hair through the half-cracked window of the abandoned factory. This would be a quick mission, he thought, and maybe he could get Phil to convince Fury to give him a few days off before he left for the next mission in Rio.

"_Nice and easy, Clint_," came Coulson's voice through his comm link. "_Clean-up is on the way_."

His target had her back turned towards him, and seemed to be negotiating with Alexei Shostakov, an infamous Russian arms dealer. Clint had chosen a simple arrow for his target. Sexy, but one without any special abilities. Just a smooth, sharp tip for a clean shot through her neck, which would knock her out for the next few hours so he could get her to the helicarrier for questioning. Fury told Clint to kill Shostakov, but he wanted the notorious Black Widow alive.

Clint took a deep breath and aimed…

…just as Natasha Romanoff reached for her gun.

"_Shit,_" Clint cursed, as Romanoff shot Shostakov right in the middle of his forehead. Twenty of his bodyguards immediately began shooting at her, but she was two steps ahead, already pouncing on one of the guards and knocking him to the ground with a thigh choke. From his perch on top of a building two blocks away, Clint could hear the ceaseless gunfire.

"Coulson!" Clint yelled through his comm link, "Forget clean-up! I'm going in."

He ignored Coulson's protests and shot a grappling hook straight for the room, where his target was currently taking on seven guards at once. As he slid towards the room, Romanoff saw him, her eyes ablaze as they made eye contact for one split second. A few of Shostakov's guards yelped and began shouting in Russian, frantically pointing at Barton as he crashed through the window, showering the room in broken glass. A few of the guards began shooting at Clint, but with a lazy flick of his bow, he had twelve guards down in a second with one of his trick arrows.

Meanwhile, Romanoff had just finished off the last guard, flipping him on his back and sending two bullets into his chest. She looked up at Clint, panting slightly, a look of focus and passion on her face. This is what she was trained to do. This is what she lived for.

Clint already had an arrow pointed at her forehead.

Romanoff gave him one look and smirked.

"You think I'm pretty?" she spat in Russian, standing up and wiping off the blood from a deep gash on the side of her face. "Take a picture. It'll last longer."

Clint hesitated.

"I've seen worse," he growled.

The Black Widow smirked.

"Good," she purred. "Because it's about to get a _lot_ worse."

And she pulled the pin the grenade she was holding, throwing it at the lifeless body of Alexei Shostakov.

Clint mentally punched himself as his target sprinted behind him and jumped out the broken window. In half a second, he was following her, and in five seconds, the factory went down in a fireball of smoke and rubble as he swung back to the building he was perched on minutes before the mission FUBAR'd. He landed smoothly, got up, and saw that his target was sprinting down the street five stories below him. Cracking his knuckles, he ran after her, jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

"_Barton?!_ _Barton!_" Phil Coulson yelled through his ear. "_What the hell? What just happened over there? You've got fifteen minutes before Fury sends a backup team after your ass…_"

Clint ignored him and jumped ten feet from a building, still chasing after his target, who had just made a hard left into an abandoned alleyway.

She was still running, but Clint was faster. He had her cornered in two minutes as he tackled her to the ground.

The Widow snarled and aimed a punch for his face, which Clint dodged. He was surprised that her eyes were still ablaze with the same passion and concentration, even though it was obvious that she was exhausted and close to collapsing. It was a pretty even match, and she even managed to kick him hard enough to break a few ribs after he nicked her in the arm pretty deeply with a knife. But after a few minutes and much effort, Clint had pinned her to the ground, holding a knife to her throat.

They were both panting. The Black Widow looked beaten and exhausted, but there was no fear in her eyes at all as she glared at Clint with the same ferocity as when she first made eye contact with him. Something had been done to her, Clint realized, to completely erase all human reflexes of fear and death. She was no longer a person. She was a machine set to kill.

"Do it," she hissed.

He was still breathing hard.

"I thought you worked for Shostakov," he panted. "Why did you kill him?"

The Widow chuckled.

"Shostakov? That _mongrel_," she spat. "Does this mean we're on the same side, archer?"

For the second time that day, Clint hesitated.

"Who do you work for?" he demanded.

She finally broke eye contact with him, looking away and closing her eyes.

"I don't know," she whispered after a while.

From his years working at the circus and with SHIELD, Clint could tell when someone was lying.

She wasn't.

He put away his knife. The Widow winced as he got off of her, looking up at him in confusion.

"I don't work for anyone…" she repeated slowly, "so I'll have no problem killing you. You know that right?"

Clint smiled.

"I know what it's like," he said quietly as he placed his knife back in its sheath.

"What _what's_ like?" the Widow snapped.

"What it's like to have nothing to live for. To have people betray you, torture you… change you until you don't know who you are anymore."

The Widow looked away.

"_Natasha Romanoff_," Clint continued. "The Black Widow. I read your file. Trained as an assassin since you were four – I know what that's like."

"You know _nothing_," Natasha hissed, in English this time.

"Well I'm making a different call," he said, and offered her a hand up.

She looked back up at him, and for the first time, Clint saw a flash of fear and pain in her eyes. After a whole minute of staring at each other, she took his hand, wincing as he pulled her up.

"Arterial bleed," he muttered, examining her arm.

"What?"

"Your arm. Where I cut you. That's an arterial bleed, might even have nicked the bone. Sorry," he added, not quite sure if he meant it, as his side throbbed from where she had kicked him. "You'll go into shock unless the bleeding stops. They can fix it in the med bay."

"Where are you taking me?" she asked, wincing as he put pressure on her injury.

Clint pressed his comm link.

"Coulson, tell Fury to forget back-up. I'm bringing back a souvenir."

* * *

Phil didn't say anything as his best agent arrived back at base with his target still quite conscious and not even in handcuffs. He noticed that Clint had torn off a piece of his shirt to bandage the Black Widow's arm, and that he immediately began making orders to get Romanoff to the medical bay of the helicarrier.

"You want to explain this to me, Coulson?" came a stern voice from behind him.

Phil turned to face his furious boss. Fury asked him the same question, in the same severe tone of voice, after practically every mission.

"Barton made a different call, sir," he said simply, as Nick Fury looked into the medical bay, where Clint was watching Natasha steadily as a nurse began examining her am. "He said she wasn't working for Shostakov, so there wasn't a point to shoot her. Video surveillance shows that she killed Shostakov herself."

Fury grunted.

"He never goes against orders," Phil pointed out. "So she must be something special."

"You _trust_ the _Widow_?" Fury asked.

"Barton seems to."

Fury glared with his good eye. Phil was used to it.

"Send them together to Rio next week," he suggested, as his boss turned to glower at the agency's best marksman once more. "See what happens. Maybe it'll work out."

* * *

In Rio, Barton and Romanoff completed the mission, as partners, in record time. In just twenty minutes, all of AIM's incognito agents in the city were knocked out and being dragged into SHIELD's prison on the helicarrier. Barton and Romanoff left the mission with barely a scratch. Fury was pleased, but of course he didn't show it – especially when Coulson gave him a pointed _I told you so_ look as they passed in the hall before debriefing.

"Barton," Fury snapped as he stepped into Clint's office, where Clint and Natasha were finishing up paperwork from the spectacular mission.

Barton and Romanoff looked up.

"Yes sir?"

"Get Romanoff a proper SHIELD uniform."

Clint smiled.

"Yes sir."

* * *

**A.N.: **Once again, not a weapons/fighting expert hahaha


	4. Chapter 4

_New Orleans, March 2008_.

Clint watched Natasha through the SHIELD-issued binoculars Phil gave him for the mission. She was about a mile away from his perch on top of a building, chatting amicably outside a fancy restaurant with the director of Crossfire Industries. Natasha adjusted the folds of her red dress and flashed the Cajun middle-aged director a dazzling smile, moving closer to him. She was pretending to be a wealthy representative for a Russian gang who were interested in buying illegal weapons from him.

Clint rolled his eyes, thumbing his bow. He was bored. Fury decided to them this simple mission after an unexpectedly harrowing one last month in Mexico City, where he and Natasha spent two days in a prison cell after being caught off guard and hopelessly outgunned. Phil Coulson himself led the resulting rescue mission for SHIELD's two best field agents.

Sighing, Clint wiped some sweat off his brow. Even in March, New Orleans was scorching. Hopefully Natasha would finish up soon, get the information she needed, and they could knock out the director and return to the pleasantly air conditioned helicarrier stationed over the Gulf of Mexico before midnight.

"Gotcha, _birdboy_," came a snarl from behind him.

Clint whirled around in alarm, drawing his bow and coming face-to-face with forty Crossfire guards, each one of them pointing their gun at him.

He cursed to himself.

"No you didn't," he replied, and fired the sonic arrow. He leaped off the ledge of the building as it exploded, leaving all of the guards writhing on the ground, blood trickling from their mouths, ears, and noses. Clint was a good hundred feet away on the roof of the adjacent building as it detonated, but even he felt his eardrums burst. No doubt that Natasha heard the blast too, he thought, but at least she was a safe distance away.

Clint's head was splitting with pain as he rolled onto his back, letting out a string of colorful curses. He yanked out the blood-soaked comm link from his ear, moaned slightly, and passed out.

* * *

His ears were ringing.

Except it was more like a ring that throbbed against the inside of his skull.

"Clint? _Clint! Barton!_"

The voice sounded miles away. It was slightly comforting nonetheless.

Clint moaned and opened his eyes.

Natasha was standing over him. He was in the medical bay of the helicarrier, and she was wearing a red dress instead of her customary uniform. _Oh yeah _– he remembered.

New Orleans. The mission.

"Nat?" he groaned.

His voice was a dull muffle. What was happening? Natasha's lips were moving, but he could barely hear a thing coming out her mouth.

_Shit_.

He looked up at her worried expression. Usually when she looked this worried, he was concerned for _her_.

"Nat… I can't hear you."

She began talking again. Clint wasn't the best at reading lips, and his mind was slightly discombobulated at the moment, but he made out the words "_Coulson_," "_mission_," and "_fucked yourself over._"

"I can't _hear_, Nat," he repeated.

Her eyes widened. She sat down on the edge of his bed.

Clint groaned and clutched his head in his hands. It was still throbbing, and his ears were covered in a layer of sterile gauze.

"Did you get the target?" he asked, looking up.

Natasha nodded. After a minute, she grabbed the nurse's log from the table next to him and scribbled something on it.

_Thought I had lost you_, he read.

Despite everything, Clint smiled.

"Nah, just my goddamn hearing," he muttered. His voice still sounded a million miles away. "Can't get rid of me _that_ easy, Nat."

Natasha looked relieved.

_Now you sound like you_, she wrote, smiling at her partner.

They sat in silence for a while as Clint gingerly touched his ears.

"Is it going to get better?" he asked her, afraid of what he'll hear next.

Natasha looked apologetic. She picked up the tablet and began writing again.

_Doctors say it's probably permanent. You lost 80% of your hearing in both ears – I didn't want to believe them. Coulson and Fury have all the people in R&D working on hearing aids for you now._

Clint groaned and closed his eyes. He felt Natasha take his hand after a minute and say his name, although it barely sounded like a whisper.

Natasha nudged the nurse's tablet at him. He opened his eyes.

_On the upside, I know sign language._

He looked at her.

"You do?"

She nodded and smiled, scribbling more onto the clipboard, which was supposed to be a record of his baseline vitals each hour.

_Only in Russian though, so tough luck, circus boy._

* * *

_**A.N.:**_Looooove how Clint is deaf in the comic books. Haaaaate how he's with Mockingbird.


	5. Chapter 5

_Uzbekistan, August 2011._

The Black Widow was lucky.

Just last week, she had put a bullet straight through Christoph DeFalco's skull. As she glared at her target, who had been bound helplessly in a chair before her, she met his eyes.

Natasha saw fear. Fear and maybe a little bit of remorse as he pleaded for his life, but not enough.

She made it quick. He barely felt any pain before he died, which probably was not fair to the hundreds of people he made suffer.

Maybe she was growing soft, Natasha thought, as she radioed Coulson for an extrication team.

She snarled at the thought.

No, she was just doing her job. Her days of making people suffer were over – Phil said to kill the target simply and quickly, so that's exactly what she did.

Natasha sighed. She wished Clint was with her. But of course, Fury needed him in New Mexico at the moment.

She looked over at DeFalco's lifeless body. Just a few seconds ago, he was begging Natasha for mercy, apologizing incessantly for the bomb attacks in Atlanta that had killed over a hundred civilians.

Natasha didn't really care. She knew her ledger was dripping with far more red. She might have even felt a little pity for the guy. His hair was the same sandy color as Clint's.

_Dammit_, she really _was_ growing soft.

_I'm lucky_, she thought, as she collected her weapons, which were mottled across the floor around the bodies of the ten or so guards she had taken down. At times like these, she wondered what on earth Clint saw in her that made him make that different call in Budapest. Absentmindedly, she rubbed the faint scar on her arm where Clint had cut her with his knife six years ago.

She looked at the dead DeFalco in disgust – no way would she have ever thought to give him a second chance.

Clint was different. The Black Widow and Hawkeye were very similar, but Clint believed in second chances. Natasha was a machine due to her upbringing in the Red Room, but Clint was brought up by Phil. Halfway, at least – Clint was twelve when Phil found him, broken and beaten and abandoned. And Phil believed in second chances.

Natasha knew she would never be trusting enough to give a target a second chance, especially one with so much blood on his hands. But slowly, she was learning to trust – and that was enough. She opened up to Clint first, and then Phil. Gradually, she unraveled, and Red Room became less of a lifestyle and more like a memory. The scars would always be there, but she was learning.

Red Room had taught her to kill. Clint had taught her to live.

She was lucky.


	6. Chapter 6

_SHIELD land headquarters, New York City, September 2012._

Natasha stepped out of the showers into the training room, where her partner was practicing shooting with a new set of trick arrows. She smiled.

"Clint," she called.

He didn't answer. Natasha realized that he must not have been wearing his hearing aids, since she knew he enjoyed the silence sometimes.

She walked up behind him. Sensing her presence, he turned around and smiled.

"Hey Nat," he said, putting in his hearing aids. "Need a sparring partner?"

"Nah, just showered," she said.

He nodded and turned back to his target.

"Clint."

He shot an arrow into the bulls-eye.

"Hmm?"

"Last week, when you said that thing about Budapest…"

Clint grinned.

"_You and I remember Budapest very differently_," he repeated.

Natasha hesitated.

"What did you mean?" she asked.

Clint chuckled and put his bow down on the table, taking a swig of water.

"Well," he began, adjusting his arm bands, "you probably remember the FUBAR'd gunfight. What was it, ten or so guards against you?"

"Twenty," she corrected.

"Yep. I remember Fury sent me to take you in for working with Shostakov, and then I saw you kill him first. So I made a different call."

Natasha sat on the table and touched his bow.

"Why?" she whispered, after a while.

Clint sighed. Phil always told him to trust his instinct, and something was telling Clint to spare the life of his fiery red-headed target that day. A gut feeling, and he still wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the fact that he saw a bit of himself in her – the good and the bad. He saw a lost, mindless soul who was incapable of trusting anybody, and he knew a little of what that was like.

The Swordsman. Barney. Natasha knew everything. Phil had given Clint a second chance, so he decided to do the same with Natasha. And so, emulating his mentor, the hawk took the vicious, broken spider under his wing.

"You know why," he said finally, passing her an arrow.

She got off the table and aimed at the target with Clint's bow, missing the bulls-eye by a few inches.

"Not too bad," said her partner.

Natasha rolled her eyes and grabbed a nearby gun, hitting the bulls-eye six times with each lazy flick of her hand.

Clint chuckled.

"The fighting isn't all I remember from Budapest," said Natasha quietly. She looked up at her partner, nonchalantly fumbling with the SHIELD logo on her shirt. The Black Widow never allowed anyone except Clint to see her like this – indebted, thankful. He could only recall one other person who Natasha had ever looked grateful to – Phil, when he officially gave her Clearance Level Six and a trusting smile, welcoming her to SHIELD.

She pulled her partner closer and wrapped her arms tightly around him. Clint smiled and buried his face into Natasha's sweet-smelling, slightly damp hair.

"Thanks for making that call," she whispered.

* * *

**A.N.:** Yayyy finished! I wrote this entire story on a mega long road trip in the car haha. Here's a timeline:

1983: Clint Barton born

1986: Natasha Romanoff born

1995: Phil rescues Clint (Clint is 12, Phil is 31)

2005: Budapest (Clint is 22, Natasha is 19, Phil is 41)

2008: Clint loses hearing (Clint is 25, Natasha is 22, Phil is 44)

2012: Avengers (Clint is 29, Natasha is 26, Phil is 48)

Hope you liked!


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